For a few days, none of us left the subspace. Sophia was teaching Ash all of the ins and outs of having a soulbond, including the fact that Ash’s emotions would soon start to grow far more intense than they were previously. Currently they seem to be practicing some sort of emotional control exercise, where Sophia uses different kinds of demonic magic to induce different kinds of emotions in Ash, and Ash has to struggle to retain her own rationality.
A part of me couldn’t help but wonder if this exercise could help me as well. Not with controlling emotions, I’ve got that part down pretty well, but in knowing what emotions I’m experiencing. For example, I could have Sophia use demonic magic to induce very specific emotions within myself, and rather than fighting to keep my own rational mind, I would be trying to determine which emotion Sophia was having me experience. However, when I presented her with this idea, Sophia only shook her head, and told me that it wouldn’t work.
In order for Demonic Magic to specifically target one particular emotion, you need to have a certain level of understanding about how your target feels about various things. For example, let’s say that Sophia was trying to use Demonic Magic to bring about Joy in Ash. There are two ways that she could do this. The first is that Sophia could base her spell around maids, something that brings herself joy, and then try to infuse her own emotions into Ash. The second way is that she could base the spell around creating delicate artwork, something that Ash particularly enjoys.
Both of these methods have their own pros and cons. For the first way:
Pros: This way provides a surefire way for the target to experience a particular emotion. In the provided example, this would mean that Ash would definitely experience some amount of Joy as a result of the spell cast.
Cons: Using the spell in this manner, a certain amount of the Origin of the spell would also slip through, which could cause extra emotions to crop up alongside the intended one. In the provided example, this would mean that the concept of Maids would also become an integral part of the spell, and along with the joy that Sophia experiences with the thought of Maids, Ash’s own emotions of Maids would also be triggered, so if she happened to experience disdain for them, then along with the Joy, that same Disdain would also be a resulting emotion provided by the spell cast.
In short, the first way provides precise emotional targeting, so that the target of the spell will certainly experience the intended emotion, however it also has various unpredictable emotional side effects. For the second way:
Pros: Due to the target of the spell being the spell’s Origin, this way is far less likely to be noticed by the target in question. Also, the lack of an outside Origin means that the emotions experienced will be pure, and not contaminated with any emotional side effects. In the provided example, this would mean that as a result of the spell cast, Ash would think about a certain piece of delicate artwork that she created, and feel the corresponding Joy and Accomplishment that that thought entails, without necessarily being able to notice Sophia’s influence, nor experiencing any other emotion as a result of the spell cast.
Cons: This method requires an extraordinary amount of understanding about how the target in question feels about various things. For example, let’s imagine that there is a slave and his owner, and Sophia casts the spell on both of them, setting the Origin of the spell as the concept of Slavery. Obviously, the two people would have different corresponding thoughts and emotions on this concept, which means that as a result of the spell cast, they would both experience wildly different emotional states.
` In short, this way is more powerful, harder to notice, and much more sinister as a result of those two, however it is also far less predictable than the first method. Comparing the two, we have:
Option one: Will provide a guaranteed emotion, but will provide unpredictable side effects, especially if used on someone like me who doesn’t understand his own emotions on the world around him.
Option two: Will provide a much more powerful emotional response, but who the fuck knows what it will be, because I sure as hell won’t.
Either way, neither of the options are actually valid in any sort of capacity for me to learn how to distinguish different emotions from each other. In fact, if I tried to use this, the most likely result is that various different emotions that I unknowingly have on things would result in several misunderstandings, and cause me to associate different concepts with emotions that I’m not actually experiencing, similarly to how I mistook the feelings of Fear as feelings of Excitement, leading me to believe that I enjoyed both heights and insects for almost my entire life. All in all, if I want to fully understand my own emotions, I will need to look for another way, and will not be able to rely on Demonic Magic.
For Ash’s purposes, however, none of the aforementioned drawbacks are really an issue. The exact emotions that she’s experiencing aren’t actually all that important after all, only the fact that she’s feeling something, and that she has to fight to ignore that something.
Meanwhile, since Sophia has mostly been busy helping Ash with her various new Soulbond things, Duke and I have mostly been spending time alone. I was expecting at least a little awkwardness at first, given…well…everything that’s happened, but it seems as though Duke genuinely doesn’t blame me for the death of Xavier. Or he does, but he understands why I had to do it well enough to ignore how he’s feeling for the sake of learning English and Science.
He and Sophia had both failed their homework assignment, so I’d introduced them to the concept of differently sized gears. Now, Duke was already familiar with this idea, as his own suit of armor had different kinds of gears to assist with his movements, however, they were all somewhat the same size, and he was only using them to correlate equivalent movement from one location to another.
To put it in simple terms, Duke had a certain wheel in his suit of armor that he could turn, and by turning it, it would rotate a shaft. As that shaft rotates, a set of gears would turn another shaft at the same speed that the original wheel was spinning. However, while this is a perfectly valid use of gears, it is not where gears truly shine. To take full advantage of the nature of gears, you need to use various different sizes. What this would result in, is turning either rotational speed into torque, or torque into rotational speed.
Basically, imagine that you have two different axles, and on each of these axles is a gear. On one, you have a very large gear, and on the other, you have a very small gear. If you start at the very small gear, and turn that axle, then every single revolution of the small gear would then send the same amount of energy into the larger gear. However, the larger gear isn’t moving nearly as fast as the smaller gear, so where does this energy go? Well, this energy becomes its own kind of force, making it difficult for any other outside interference to stop the larger gear from turning. For example, if each of these axles had their own wheels, and you had a small child turning the wheel to the smaller gear, and a grown man holding the wheel connected to the larger gear, then even though the grown man is a lot stronger than the small child, he still wouldn’t be able to stop the larger gear from turning, and overpower the small child. This is what we refer to as torque.
On the flip side, if we have no one touching the wheel to the smaller gear, and someone turns the wheel connected to the larger gear, then even if the larger gear is turned slowly, the smaller gear will spin extremely fast. The way this works in cars, is that engines are all connected to one main shaft, and there are different sizes of gears that connect to the axle that’s actually connected to the wheels. If you are going uphill, you don’t necessarily need to go fast, but you need a lot of force to carry you up the hill, so the size of the gear that’s connected to the wheels will be a lot larger than the gear connected to the axle that your engine is spinning. This will make it so that while your car may be going slower, it’s also got a lot more pulling power to carry you up the hill.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
However, if you are on a flat road and you’re trying to go over one hundred miles per hour, then the gear that will be connected to the wheels will be much smaller than the one connected to your engine. This will make it so that even though you have much less pulling power, your tires will be spinning much faster, making it so that you travel at an altogether higher speed.
This is the concept that I was hoping Duke, with his vast mechanical expertise, would be able to figure out for himself, though I suppose without the background concept of automobiles, this idea was far less likely to occur to him naturally. However, once I explained it to him, and he understood the differences between torque and rotational speed, Duke took that concept and started running with it. Ever since that conversation, he hasn’t left the shed for a single moment, and has been busy making modifications to his suit of armor.
And speaking of new technological developments, I’ve finally been able to finish the Project Horizon Disc over the past few days. Now, whenever I go back down to Earth, I’ll have a flying dock capable of firing long distance magical attacks and bombs. I doubt even the Royal Family would be able to withstand 100 targeted missile strikes, backed up by a barrage of fire, ice, and lightning magic. Now, is this the intended use of my Disc? No, it’s much more designed as a means of gathering information, however it’s still perfectly suited for acts of warfare.
Though there is one small modification I ended up making. Originally, I was planning on placing various security measures on it, to make sure that no one else could hijack my Disc, however…All of the enchantments are sewn from Dreamsilk, which no one other than me or Sophia can magically interact with, so…that’s kind of a moot point. All in all, it’s a huge success, and I’ve christened it with the name, ‘Magellan’, in honor of the man who followed the Horizon all the way around the globe.
And speaking of fully exploring worlds, Mirage has seen some new developments over the past couple of days. In an attempt to understand my own creation of Mira, I have made another A.I., or in her words, “A new little brother”. This one…this one served three purposes for me. Firstly, by making sure I actually can observe the process by which it is created, I hoped to comprehend what exactly Mira is, and all of the questions I have surrounding her, such as why she acts like a five year old, why she was able to start moving before being attached to her body, and why she seems so…alive.
Secondly, Mira doesn’t seem to need sleep, which means that when I’m awake, she’s been exploring Mirage alone. I don’t know whether or not she will develop like normal people, given that at the end of the day she is an A.I. that I created, but if she does, spending that much time alone cannot be good for her. So along with understanding the exact nature of Mira, this second A.I. will also assist her in not experiencing loneliness.
And finally…I created this A.I. as an act of penance? Or maybe an act of denial. I can’t truly know what I was feeling at the time that I created it, but…maybe it was a way of mourning what could have been. Or maybe it was guilt over what I had destroyed. The body of this second A.I. has two forms. In the first form, it is an adorable little black cat. However, in the second form…it is a young boy with Asian features, pointed ears, and a wolf’s tail. The face and personality of it were modeled after two sources: Ash…and Xavier. A hypothetical son between the two of them, now no more than a shattered dream. Sure, the two of them may not have been together yet…but from what Sophia has told me about what she knew, they were well on their way.
This new A.I. of mine, ‘my new son’, as Mira calls him, I have named Cole. Interestingly enough, his personality, like Mira, is considerably younger than I would have expected. If I had to guess, I’d say maybe 12ish? He has the feeling of youthful inexperience about him, but without the hormonal irrationality brought about by puberty. While Cole may technically be Mira’s younger brother, in many ways he’s taken up the role of the elder sibling between the two, letting Mira take the lead and humoring all of her little games that she likes to play, meanwhile keeping an eye on her to make sure she’s okay.
This last habit of his is what confuses me the most. What is it that Cole is trying to protect Mira from? This is my world, where nothing can harm either one of them. Does he understand something about Mirage that I don’t, as someone who fully exists in this place? Or is this just X’s personality shining through, that quality of constantly trying to look out for what’s best for everyone around him? I don’t know.
While creating Cole, I understood why Mira was able to combine her mind with her body without my being involved. The key behind it is the fact that the basis for both of their existences is my own soul. By building their subconscious minds on my own soul, it seems as though rather than creating Artificial Intelligences like I had originally intended, what I was actually doing was creating Alternate Personalities. Basically, Both Mira and Cole, while they seem alive, and like their own entities, they aren’t. They are both pieces of my own mind, given consciousness of their own.
Upon realizing this, I was concerned at first that I had accidentally given myself some form of Dissociative Identity Disorder, but fortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case. I’m uncertain as to why, but both Cole and Mira seem to be completely stuck in Mirage, unable to affect anything in the waking world, or unable to affect me outside of our own conversations that we have while I’m in Mirage.
All in all, it’s been a relaxing couple of days, but today that would have to change. I still had a plan that I had to execute after all. After I completed the Magellan, I’d spent a couple hours remaking and re-editing another Memory Battery enchantment, with only the Kingdom’s plans, cutting out all of the other things that the member of the Royal Family I’d interrogated had mentioned. After…Everything that had happened with X, I seemed to have lost the original memory stick, as well as two of my flying knives.
“Seriously Leo, don’t. I changed my mind, it’s not worth you getting hurt again.” Ash said, trying to talk me out of completing the original plan that I’d set out to do. But…I wasn’t just doing this for her anymore. Now, I was also doing this for me. I wouldn’t let her convince me to cancel it.
“Ash.” I said firmly. “If I don’t go through with this…it means that what I did…it means that I killed Xavier for no reason. I have to do this, Ash. Not for you, and not for the Citizens of the Capital, I have to do this for my own sake. So that I don’t have to be someone who pointlessly murdered someone that I respect.”
Ash seemed to grow quiet from that, before coming up with, “If it’s about X, then wouldn’t not doing it…couldn’t you see not going through with the plan as a final gift to him? As a way of honoring his wishes, rather than as making the fact that you killed X pointless?”
I shook my head. “Like I said, this isn’t for anyone other than myself, including X. Yes, Xavier may be the trigger behind everything, but it’s my own actions that I’m trying to justify. Maybe it’s irrational, maybe it makes absolutely no sense, but…I think those are my emotions behind this. I can’t know for certain, but…I’m pretty sure about this.”
I didn’t go into the reason I’m sure about it, as I haven’t told Sophia or Ash anything about Mirage. However, Mira, emboldened by me calling her my partner, has been taking it upon herself to tell me all of the stupid things that I’ve been thinking. Mira is the one who suggested that not going through with the original plan would mean that I killed X for no reason, and given that Mira is actually just a part of my own mind…I took that to mean that these are in fact my own thoughts, that I don’t have access to. Is this correct? I have no idea. But either way, I’m willing to take a leap of faith based on the words of my cute little dragon daughter.
If I regret this in the future, then I’ll deal with that later. But for right now, I need to do what at least some part of me believes in. I may not have any sort of opinion on what’s right and what’s wrong, but that was never what this was about in the first place. This has always been about taking the actions that the people I care about want me to take, and it’s about time that I start trying to consider myself as someone I care about. It’s about time that I start trying to do things for myself, rather than letting myself just be taken along for the ride and only ever doing things for Sophia and Ash. Will I still help Sophia steal the moon? Absolutely. If Ash wants to do something in the future, will I still help her? Absolutely. But along with those, I also need to start figuring out what I want. What I genuinely want to do with this new life of mine. What I Desire.
With a wave of my hand, I brought myself back to Earth, along with my Magellan, and an Ash who demanded that if I insisted on going through with this, that I would at least take her along with me so that she could watch my back. However, as we arrived on Earth, rather than arriving to the cacophony of a city filled with millions of people living their lives, we arrived at a city shrouded in complete and total silence.
The hundreds of thousands of buildings, which only days before housed millions of lives, were now all empty, their doors all smashed open, revealing an interior devoid of any form of life. On the streets, every few feet there was a body lying cold, showing signs of being trampled as apparently everyone who’d been in the Capital fled. Here and there was the odd straggler, elderly people who couldn’t risk leaving in the chaos of whatever had occurred to this City in the days that we were gone, and were only just now leaving. I approached one of them, and asked what had happened, claiming that I was hunting deep in the woods surrounding the Capital, and had completely missed whatever had apparently gone down.
“It all started when the Castle vanished. A voice rang all throughout the Capital, announcing that the Royal Family were all gone, and next thing we knew, millions of sticks started raining from the sky, all of which were enchanted to show a confession by a member of the Royal Family, that they were secretly working with the bandits to start a civil war, so that they could kill millions of us. After that, it was utter pandemonium. No one knew whether the Royal Family was truly gone, or whether the Voice in the Sky, who claimed to be powerful enough to wipe them all out without any of us noticing, would start targeting us next, so…everyone fled for their lives.
“It was pure chaos. Everyone running, people getting trampled underfoot, screaming, no one knowing where to go, or what to do. People broke into any building that they could find, stealing as much as they could, hoping to grab enough to get by. The owners of the buildings getting broken into sometimes fighting them to the death, sometimes just grabbing whatever they could themselves and running away. All in all…the Kingdom has fallen, and the Capital is no more. I suggest you two kids get yourselves somewhere else. I know I will be.”
The end of the Kingdom Arc. I'll be taking a few days off from releasing chapters, as I only recently decided what I want the next arc to be. I should be back on daily releases by the end of the week though, so if anyone has any sort of recommendations, or overall writing tips/suggestions, feel free to drop a comment or shoot me a message.